A few months ago, Brytni McNeil, a 34-year-old mother of five daughters, was flipping through a copy of a George Washington Carver biography listed in a homeschooling curriculum when she spotted some glaring inaccuracies.
Most notably, enslavers were referred to as “caregivers” who benevolently bestowed their last names on Black people.
“Those subtle lies that creep into material is how a child begins to develop their entire world view. That child grows up thinking, we have no culture, we didn’t even have names,” said McNeil, who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. “You’ll find curriculums that tell half-truths, or don’t leave spaces and room for more questions.”
It’s incidents like these that have led McNeil to join a broader contingent of Black home educators, many of them Christian mothers, who are creating and adopting anti-racist curricula. In 2020, the percentage of Black households opting for homeschooling surged from 3.3% in the spring to 16.1% in the fall, per U.S. Census data.
Despite the recent swell in Black-centered homeschooling, many homeschooling curricula lag far behind when it comes to Black inclusion. And both the racist history of the 1960s homeschooling movement, which attracted families opposed to desegregation, as well as the persistent perception that homeschooling is the exclusive domain of white, conservative Christians act as barriers for Black families who might otherwise consider home education.
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But for many Black home educators like McNeil, homeschooling is less a way of protecting kids from the secular influence of public education and instead a way of protecting kids from a racially biased institution. McNeil doesn’t want to shield her kids from reality — but to create a safe space to grapple with truth on her terms.
“I wanted them to be able to wrestle with the beauty and brokenness of our story as Black Americans,” McNeil told media in a recent call. “I wanted them to be able to do it in a safe environment where we can hit pause, discuss the hard bits, weep over things that are sad in our history. And I wanted to make sure they had a steady diet of the triumph of our people.”
McNeil’s original introduction to homeschooling was as a child growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, and later Phoenix, Arizona. But though she enjoyed being homeschooled, her curriculum wasn’t of the anti-racist variety.
The daughter of pastors, McNeil said she was raised in churches that prided themselves on the idea of diversity but didn’t alter white-centered power structures and only accepted Black folks who accommodated white expectations and comfortability.
“My understanding of race as a child was essentially to act as though it didn’t exist,” McNeil recalled. “I think in order to survive and thrive in a way, my parents, unfortunately, had to assimilate.”
Surrounded by a political environment that dismissed racism as a relic of the past, McNeil would instinctively rationalize her own encounters with racism. She was repeatedly asked the dehumanizing question, “what are you?” and told she was “pretty for a Black girl.” These incidents made her uncomfortable, but they were just misunderstandings, she thought.
McNeil has always considered homeschooling a form of spiritual formation. An evangelical Christian who is simultaneously “deeply troubled” by much of evangelicalism, McNeil believes God is the author of all knowledge. But in 2020, McNeil’s understanding of her role as a Christian mother suddenly expanded.
The murder of George Floyd shocked McNeil, as did the wave of solidarity that came after, prompting her to reckon with the racism she’d experienced head on. In the isolation of the pandemic lockdown, McNeil was finally “still enough before God… to hear him, and to see him finally peel these layers back in my heart,” McNeil told Jemar Tisby in a recent episodio de podcast as part of his “Fighting Racism” series done in partnership with Religion News Service.
Now, McNeil believes racial justice isn’t merely a social cause; it’s also an eternal reality Christians are called to embody.
“At the end of all things, we all stand before Jesus and we all worship together from every nation, tribe and tongue,” said McNeil. “And I think Christians, in my opinion, should be the most outspoken people for racial justice because it’s literally our inheritance through our faith.”
Since 2020, McNeil has created a free guide for parents navigating racism in children’s literature, revamped her Instagram as a resource for anti-racist home educators and released a course on a Christ-centered approach to anti-racist parenting.
Her 14-lesson parenting course uses the acronym HEAVEN (Humility, Empathy, Awareness, Verbalization, Endurance, Nurture) to offer a Scripture-grounded approach to unlearning and confronting racism via pre-recorded videos, a reflection guide, action steps and liturgies.
“When I was growing up, I thought the history of our people started with enslavement. They need to know that’s not the starting point,” McNeil told media. “I want them to have these filters so they can spot biased information very quickly and discern it … That’s just something I feel like the public school system cannot offer.”
McNeil isn’t the only Christian home educator curating anti-racist resources. Nicole Cottrell, a biracial home educator, had already been collecting and loaning out books featuring people of color from around the world when, in 2020, she took her booklists online via Stories of Color. It’s a free resource that includes curated books on topics like the importance of hair and books to read instead of biased classics, as well as homeschooling guides and a detailed catalog of over 2,650 books.
Six years ago, Amber O’Neal Johnston founded Heritage Homeschoolers of Cobb County, a co-op for Black homeschoolers and their families that offers enrichment classes, field trips and community service opportunities. While the co-op is composed largely of Christian families, there’s no faith requirement for members. Johnston saw an uptick from 76 families in the fall of 2019 to 105 families the following school year, and she says that while some of the growth was due to families searching for safe options during the pandemic, others have been switching to homeschooling to avoid racial disparities in education, find culturally relevant curriculum or simply to spend more time with their kids.
Johnston has seen pushback to anti-racist homeschooling online and at some Christian homeschooling conferences, but the reverberations of that pushback aren’t in her home, “and that’s kind of the whole point,” she said.
“I’m out here championing these things alongside Brytni and some of the other moms. And we’re all in different cities, but it feels like we’ve all linked arms and are actively resisting. And rather than trying to fight back, the way we fight back is by educating.”
Johnston added that McNeil uniquely contributes to the homeschooling landscape by integrating her faith and her racial background into her resources.
“I could get behind what she was saying because it was unapologetically Christian, and unapologetically Black. And she shows that those two things are not opposing factors,” said Johnston. “That’s the angle I also speak from. It kind of felt like I found a sister, someone I could trust, open up to when things were hard.”
Cottrell agreed. “For her, it’s holy work,” she said, referring to McNeil. “I don’t personally know of anything else written from a gospel-centered perspective that’s anti-racist training for parents. I think she’s filled a huge need.”
And while McNeil unapologetically calls out the places where homeschooling remains white-centered and, in extreme cases, abusive, she hopes to model how homeschooling can also be faithful and anti-racist.
“I see my home as a mission field, just like any other, and feel called to share the love of Christ with my children, and to share life with them in a way that makes the reality of God come alive in a beautiful, life-giving way,” she said. “My hope is that one day they are caught up in something that feels so real and so genuine and so of God, that they feel drawn to it. Not pressured into it, but drawn into it.”
Kathryn Post is a reporter for Religion News Service based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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24 Respuestas
As some one extremely familiar with the homeschooling community and curriculums, it would be helpful if she would specifically cite the curriculums that are “racist“ and those that made false statements regarding George Washington Carver. I’ve never seen these statements made regarding Carver in any curriculum I’ve encountered within homeschooling or Christian school education. I would have noticed since he’s always been one of my favorite historical figures.
Here is one very popular curriculum that promotes concerning views about slavery in the US. Note that this post is part of a series on that curriculum. https://rachelgreenmiller.com/2016/05/03/wilsons-influence-on-classical-christian-education/.
Sorry but I didn’t find what was presented as compelling evidence for racism. I think one of problems when it comes to education is the assumption that curriculum is objective esp in certain subjects like history or literature. But for students at higher grade levels, that is part of the learning process a homeschooler is trying to do, engage with the perspective presented and judge for themselves. The whole article doesn’t seem to get this yet that is exactly what the Omnibus does understand. So a curriculum about views or opinions that might be offending or wrong is not itself wrong. People use the same logic with the Bible because it mentions stories with sin using descriptive language. It doesn’t mean the Bible is justifying the behavior as right just because it is presented. Furthermore, when it comes to history, there can be other views that are valid although you may interpret them as offensive and miss the point being made. The decisions people made in history is multi-faceted and not always about one issue. It is easy to criticize one thing out of the whole context of what the people did.
Wait to go Brytni. This is great news and white children need the truth too so I hope many home school parents get your learning tools. I too, am “An evangelical Christian who is simultaneously “deeply troubled” by much of evangelicalism.” So troubled by so called Christian Nationalist and racist non christ like behavior in the church. Troubled by Thomas Jefferson penning the D of I, saying all men created equal, but owning them/slaves. Talk about hypocritical. And yet we hold that up as this great declaration. I cant even say the pledge of allegiance anymore bc there is NO JUSTICE FOR ALL. When we as a country can offer truth and justice for all, maybe then I can again say it but the last few years, I just cant. i was so disappointed when i learned that most of what i learned about native American history wasnt true either. I’m so glad you are working toward teaching truth. It’s what we all need.
There is very little justice in the world for people of any color. As Christians we are waiting for Christs return to make all things whole.
I’m going to need more information before I can conclude that “anti-racism” isn’t just the modern iteration of “kill Whitey” that I remember coming up on the South Side of Chicago during the 1960s.
Rabindranath:
The fact that you read this:
“Her 14-lesson parenting course uses the acronym HEAVEN (Humility, Empathy, Awareness, Verbalization, Endurance, Nurture) to offer a Scripture-grounded approach to unlearning and confronting racism via pre-recorded videos, a reflection guide, action steps and liturgies”
and landed on some sort of “kill Whitey” message says a lot about you and perhaps what you should unlearn and confront than (using this same acronym).
Interesting how Black people are often told to “let go of the past” when discussing our history, yet you can be stuck on whatever you heard in 1960 and fail to see the irony.
Marín:
If you want to have a serious conversation about whether and how much race hatred directed against white people is central to the “anti racism” movement, a good place to start might be with explaining how it is possible to eliminate “whiteness: without eliminating white people.
If you would prefer to erase my lived experience to portray any deviation from orthodoxy as prima facie racist and unworthy of examination, you can do it without me.
If your argument is, “I draw a distinction between X and Y, therefore Y does not exist and is not worth being talked about”, I would invite your attention to the words of several prominent black academicians:
Professor Brittney Cooper, for example, who said, “”The thing I want to say to you is we got to take these mother******* out.” https://nj1015.com/nj-rutgers-prof-white-people-need-to-be-taken-out/
The late Professor Kamau Kambon, who said at a forum on Hurricane Katrina at Howard University in 2005,”The problem on the planet is white people … We have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet, to solve this problem.”
We could look also at
Mark LeVine (Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at UC Irvine) does not appear to be black, but I offer no opinion on the s ubject His paean to the late historian Noel Ignatiev was published by al Jazeera i 2019 and quotes Mr. Ignatiev’ Race Traitor magazine as saying, “Abolish the white race – by any means necessary”.. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/11/17/abolishing-whiteness-has-never-been-more-urgent/
I don’t know how mainstream these comments are, but they do exist. If recognizing that fact makes me a racist, in a world where fractions, pedestrian crossings, punctuality, personal grooming and hygiene, regular mealtimes, classical music, American historical documents, and ketchup are racist, I guess I’ll just have to deal with it on my own.
Ravi –
My argument is based on what I have personally read, thought about and experienced.
And here is food for thought: not all Black people agree on everything. You can quote all the Black academics and professors you’d like – I can also quote others who back up what I said about whiteness being a “mindset” to be challenged (and I agree with that). There are academic writings by prolific minds that validly debate multiple sides of all sorts of issues – from feminism to abortion to affirmative action to reparations and the like. Why can’t racism/anti-racism be the same?
PLEASE allow Black people to be individuals who have differing opinions and views on topics, without said topic being COMPLETELY validated or invalidated because of a few. The “well these few Black people said this/agree with me on this/etc, so I’m right!” argument is problematic. Black people are not a monolith, nor do we have “spokespeople” who represent all of us.
It’s no different then if I were to quote a few White people and their VERY concerning views on race and conservativism – and then using them to dismiss all of conservatism as racist and say “I’ll just have to deal with it on my own”.
Perhaps consider anti-racism is a multi-faceted topic.
Ms Heiskell-
I don’t know who this “Ravi” person is, but from the text of your comment I assume that it has something to do with our conversation on this thread.
The learned savants I cited have swerved into the notion that “Everything would be just fine if we killed enough of the right people”.I don’t think this is a widely held position but I notice that you don’t say that you disagree with them. If you don’t think that white people are “m*****f******s” who need to be “taken out” as Professor Cooper puts it, here’s an opportunity to say so.
And if you want me to allow black people to be individuals, you would have a more persuasive argument if you were to grant the same treatment to non-black persons.
You get the last word.
Apologies my autocorrect changed the spelling of your name and I didn’t catch it before I submitted.
I stated what I agree with and why, using examples of how whiteness (as a mindset) has directly impacted me (to which you never replied). I also shared I read up on it, because I wanted a better understanding of how whiteness was being defined; if misunderstood, that term can be weaponized to fuel racism, which is not ok. I said nothing about killing white people or referring to them as “MF’s”, because it’s completely outlandish, against my beliefs, and I do not speak that way about anyone of any color or belief system. I didn’t think I needed to say that as a Christian on a Christian site, but ok.
And you should allow Black people to be individuals because we ARE, and it’s the right thing to do. For you to say “I’ll do it if you do it” is problematic. What happened to doing the right thing because it’s just right?
And to clarify, I did not group all white people together. I said my understanding of whiteness is it’s a mindset (not a people) that’s been established and reinforced by a majority – and that has marginalized whatever (or whoever) is “different”. It doesn’t just happen with race; it happens across a slew of identities. I also stand by my argument that we should challenge labels and perspectives that are merely deemed accurate because of what the majority says.
Thank you for sharing. I will pass along to a few families I know who are pondering homeschooling to escape the minefields of political and virtue signaling now present in so many schools (public AND private).
Looks like Brytni has found both a passion and God-given purpose in her work. I pray it makes a huge difference in the education and spiritual grounding of families.
Best wishes to Ms. McNeil. Homeschooling can be the right option for all kinds of families, and when a person recognizes an approach that’s not being supplied with materials or organization, that’s a great opportunity for a lot of people.
While she is teaching about racism and enslavement I hope she teaches a comprehensive history of slavery. For instance what about the white Irish people brought to the US as slaves?
Until recently they were looked down upon, ostracized and more in Chicago. Whites sold whites, blacks sold blacks. The largest slaveholder in the early days of this country was a black man – owning over 10,000 slaves.
Also teach about the people enslaved today. Many thousands of them in Muslim countries.
It’s great to be gospel centered but as a Christian we need also to be factually centered.
“Also teach about the people enslaved today.”
Azalea, thanks for sharing your thoughts! The ruling authorities do not want us to consider how sophisticated slavery today has become in so many different arenas, in doing so they keep us distracted with only their choice snippets from the past.
Here is just one example:
“Whether intentional or not, it can be argued that the US Government has become the middleman in a large scale, multi-billion-dollar, child trafficking operation run by bad actors seeking to profit off the lives of children…. Realizing that we were not offering children the American dream, but instead putting them into modern-day slavery with wicked overlords was a terrible revelation…. They threatened me with an investigation. They… took my badge. It is a terrible thing when you blow the whistle to try to save children and you’re retaliated against for trying to help. The HHS [The United States Department of Health and Human Services] did everything they could to keep all of this silent.” — Tara Lee Rodas, testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, April 26, 2023.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19780/sex-trafficking-child-abuse-biden-administration
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Azalea –
I think this is good – especially when taught in full context.
What makes slavery in the US stand out is we are the only country that participated in it AFTER writing “all men are created equal” in our founding documents. No other country can say that. We should teach and explore that.
We should also teach how slavery has differed throughout history and across the world (slavery as references in scripture, indentured servitude, race-based slavery, slavery as a tool of war, etc), and how some bought slaves to protect their own (a common practice among Black people in the US). Not all slavery is the same.
We also need to teach that the plight of Black people did not end with slavery. The reconstruction and Jim Crow eras were “updates” to slavery that still confined, robbed, and terrorized Black people based on skin color. It’s also a great lesson on the social construct of race, and how “white” didn’t include Irish or Italians until the mid-20th century – and it DID include Middle Easterners until our most recent census.
History is as complex and nuanced as the people who were part of it.
It is hard to understand why Christians work so hard to keep people ignorant of history by whitewashing it.
A “Christian” superintendent in Oklahoma actually wants to teach children that the Tulsa Race Massacre, where white terrorists murdered hundreds of blacks, wasn’t racially motivated.
Oklahoma superintendent of schools says Tulsa Race Massacre wasn’t due to color of anyone’s skin
NEWSMARK WINGFIELD | JULY 7, 2023
https://baptistnews.com/article/oklahoma-superintendent-of-schools-says-tulsa-race-massacre-wasnt-due-to-color-of-anyones-skin/
Greg, it appears that article (hit piece?) was later updated with his response:
“The media is twisting two separate answers,” he told KOCO-TV. “They misrepresented my statements about the Tulsa Race Massacre in an attempt to create a fake controversy. Let me be crystal clear that history should be accurately taught: One, the Tulsa Race Massacre is a terrible mark on our history. The events on that day were racist, evil, and it is inexcusable. Individuals are responsible for their actions and should be held accountable. Two, kids should never be made to feel bad or told they are inferior based on the color of their skin.”
racism is the darkness that never dies. Everything is racist. Not enough to not be racist but now we must be anti racist. What’s that even mean? This is critical race theory, 1611 project all hiding under the banner of the Faith.
This anti racism suggests only whites are racist.
The church and the world are two separate entities. In Christ, there is no black or white, Galatians 3!
People who identify first and foremost by their color are engaging in identity politics. Where is that in the New Covenant.
Also a lot of alleged racism is subjective. Didn’t get hired? Gotta be racism. Lost a job? Gotta be racism. Didn’t win the contest? Gotta be racism. Having an ID card is racist. Being on time is racism. Not acknowledging your racism is racism. I see more and more progressive leftists journalists as the author of what is posted
If one is truly in Christ there is no racism. TRUTH.
The vast majority are not in Christ however, therefore racism is real and has been demonstrated throughout the history of humanity. It will not end on this side of time.
You can be racist and hold the majority power. You can also be racist and powerless.
Those with the power who are not in Christ, and hold these biases will inevitably use that power to oppress.
The ones not in power and not in Christ may also hold the same racist biases, but not be in a position to oppress.
Yes, the answer is Christ. But while most of the world we live in does not have love for all He has made, we have to find every way we can to examine how racism affects those who are not in power. This is not something we can just ignore and say the answer is Jesus. This is critical race theory as I view it through my lens of faith in Christ.
Christians should be the first ones to be speaking out for the poor, the oppressed, the weak, to be putting others ahead of ourselves.
Psalm 82:3 “Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
And yet so often it is the Christian standing in the way of justice. This is not Christianity.
I read several texts and essays on eliminating whiteness to better understand it. My takeaway: it’s not about eliminating or hating a person. It’s about challenging and changing a mindset that places the perspective, images and views of whites at the center.
I’ll use myself as an example: as a middle aged Black woman, I grew up daydreaming about being white. After all, the images of beauty, intelligence, power – and even Jesus – were all white. (Any attempts at Black ones were labeled as politically correct, which we call “woke” today). I hated my name for not being “normal” or Eurocentric. I hated being told I was pretty or smart “for a Black girl”, as if those traits are unusual in someone like me. I fried my Afro hair straight because “kinky hair is ugly and unprofessional”. I learned the only good Black person who ever lived was MLK. No other Black history in school. Instead of learning how Black people survived the atrocities of slavery and Jim Crow, it was “be quiet, you weren’t the only ones enslaved; what about white slaves?”
The common denominator: my beliefs were all anchored in what white people deemed acceptable, normal, and allowable. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but these narratives perpetuate low esteem and racism. We can find similar problematic narratives in our views on politics, foreign policy, religion and more.
And they won’t go away on their own or by “not talking about race”. Anti-racism is about being intentional in addressing them.
“ History is as complex and nuanced as the people who were part of it.”
Marin, I’m sure you’re familiar with the saying that “History is a Set of Lies Agreed Upon”? One of the biggest difficulties in discussing history is what was reality/fact/truth versus what was fictional/manufactured/lies.
Far too many people are not aware of the extent at which a few people manipulate and control the majority, and have done so for a very long time. This means the few control the narrative recorded in the majority of history books on every and any subject you can name.
The sad reality is the few are unrighteous people who hate God and his creation. They are cunning liars because their father is the Devil (Jn 8:44), and they don’t want the majority to discover the truth.
I’d highly suggest you visit Dr. VA Shiva’s (inventor of e-mail at age 14) website and watch his video titled The Swarm: How the Few control the Many. He recently argued pro-se and won in Federal Court after catching “the few” manipulating his social media accounts to negatively influence his 2020 election outcome. I highly doubt your formal education revealed this to you – I know mine did not.
Really encouraging to hear about Ms. McNeil’s work. Conservative Christian homeschooling materials are infamous for neglecting or outright lying about the truths of slavery and racism in US history and present. It’s great to hear that those who decide to home-school their children may now have more resources to teach a fuller picture.
Godspeed and keep up the good work!